Cooking With Your Kids: Benefits and Fun Recipes

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Cooking with your kids
Making cookies together

Involving your children in the kitchen from an early age is very important. By doing this, not only you educate your kids about various types of food and nutrition, but you also get the chance to have fun and spend quality time together.

Cooking with your kids is a great opportunity for your little ones for many reasons:

– Language and vocabulary development

Younger children learn new words if you explain to them every step of the cooking process. Older children can read the recipe for you. Besides practicing their reading skills, they also expand their vocabulary.

– Mathematical skills development

Children can enhance their mathematical skills in the kitchen, while cooking, ranging from number recognition and counting to comparing (bigger, smaller, equal, more or less than…), multiplication , weighing and fractions.

– Scientific concepts development

Kids have the opportunity to come across new scientific concepts while helping their parents cook by observing the textures, colors, forms and states (solid, liquid, fluid, gas) of the ingredients and aliments. Children can also notice the effects of various “experiments”. Here are a few of them: combining water and oil, pouring vinegar on baking soda, boiling/freezing water, baking etc.

– Creativity development

Children can decide how a plate should look or what ingredients to put in a bowl of salad or in their toast. Older kids can also create their own recipes.

– Physical development:

By adding or transferring ingredients, stirring, measuring, spreading, rolling, cutting etc. children improve their motor skills and coordination.

– Teaching kids about nutrition and healthy food choices

By cooking together, you have the opportunity to help your child learn about various types of food. They also learn about healthy and unhealthy ingredients . You can encourage them to eat home cooked food instead of fast food.

– Self-confidence development

By encouraging your child to cook a recipe on his own, you help him boost his level of self-confidence and offer him a sense of independence and self-esteem.

– Encourages family bonding and creates fun and enjoyable moments for both parents and children.

Here are a few books with fun and easy recipes to try with your kids:

Little Helpers Toddler Cookbook: Healthy, Kid-Friendly Recipes to Cook Together
Get your toddler comfortable in the kitchen with fun and simple recipes that they can help with. Little Helpers Toddler Cookbook is the perfect choice for parents who want to give adventurous young children an opportunity to learn cooking basics.
My First Cookbook: Fun recipes to cook together . . . with as much mixing, rolling, scrunching, and squishing as possible!
My First Cookbook will inspire the youngest chefs to enter the kitchen, empower them to cook, and engage their creativity–plus they’ll have fun doing it. Simple after-school snacks, family meals, and holiday celebration recipes, each beginner recipe is developed by America’s Test Kitchen Kids before being kid-tested and kid-approved.
My Very First Cookbook: Joyful Recipes to Make Together! A Cookbook for Kids and Families with Fun and Easy Recipes for Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner & More
Learning to cook is sure to boost kids’ confidence in the kitchen, it helps create special memories of your time together! These delightful and delicious recipes can be shared with the whole family for generations.
Edible Crafts Kids’ Cookbook Ages 4-8: 25 Fun Projects to Make and Eat!
Whatโ€™s cooler than making a masterpiece you can eat? The Edible Crafts Kidsโ€™ Cookbook for ages 4-8 will get little Picassos swishing, swirling, mixing, and molding in the kitchen as they create super fun art projects theyโ€™ll delight in and devour when they’re done.
Kids Can Cook Anything!: The Complete How-To Cookbook for Young Chefs
With the fifth book in the #1 New York Times Best Selling Young Chef Series, America’s Test Kitchen is bringing its scientific know-how, rigorous testing, and hands-on learning to KIDS in the kitchen!
Images source: amazon.com

Do you cook with your kid? What are your favorite recipes? Do share!

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